I think if it was possible some crazy SOB would have done it by now. Either artificially or after spiking a banana milkshake and getting back to nature.
That’s actually not a bad argument for non-hybridization. It’s just not a fully convincing one. We know, for instance, that gibbons of different genera who are much more distantly related than humans and chimps can and do interbreed. And those are very close relatives of ours. It also might take many attempts, and even some tricky lab work to get the whole process going (in vitro fertilization, for instance).
ML and FH? That means AIDS has been around humans much longer than originally thought. [ducks and hides]
Moderator Note
I realize that the thread title is too much of an easy target for some folks to pass up, but let’s keep the comments about homo in the homosexual sense out of GQ, please.
I have read the speculation for a good number of years. Question (and I know nothing about IVF): would it be immoral to try to match chimp eggs or sperm with human eggs or sperm in the lab just to see if it’s possible without letting it go past a few weeks. Wouldn’t that really settle the issue?
That’s not a GQ question since there is no factual answer to what morality is.
A Catholic theologian would say it was highly immoral. I secular person might say it’s fine.
The world might not want to know.
Missed the edit window…
But no, it wouldn’t settle things. You’d want to take it to term or almost to term since abnormalities could affect viability. And it might depend on which species was the egg donor and which was the sperm donor. It’s a lot more complicated than just knowing if fertilization could take place, but that would still be a hugely significant scientific fact if even just that were possible.
[tangent]
How did the word Homo come to be applied to the human genus, anyway? Is it used in the same sense as the prefix “homo” meaning “same” (e.g., homogenized milk; homolog; homonym)?
[/tangent]
Homo is Latin for “human”. Homo[-sexual] is Greek for “same”.
Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov is your crazy SOB.
Yeah, he comes up in all these thread. It’s unclear if he did much of anything at all, scientifically.
It would be quite fascinating if they could create a humanzee, since it’s theoretically possible I’m surprised it hasn’t been attempted more seriously in some country in the world other than in Russia, I wonder if those attempts were unsuccessful because it’s not possible or because of the limits of the field of artificial insemination at the time.
It’s not only possible, they made a documentary it.
It’s because the survivors destroy all scientific records of the monstrous experiment to preserve humanity.
To the OP, if you want a really clear description of the evolutionary process as it relates to humans, read “The Magic of Reality” by Richard Dawkins. It is an overall look at what we should all know in order to be scientifically literate. The book is aimed at a YA audience but even as an adult I found it a good review of the facts, plus it got me up to date on things that were wrongly taught when I was a kid (like basic atomic structure).
This is not a Dawkins atheist screed, so if you are religious or a non-militant atheist, as long as you are science-friendly the book won’t be offensive. A creationist wouldn’t like the book, but then, a creationist wouldn’t be trying to educate themselves on evolution.
Aren’t we still trying to decide on the antiquity on to Homo line? Isn’t there still debate over whether austalopithecines fit anywhere in the Homo line or not?
The last I read, and it was a long time ago, I’ll admit, there was actually a proposed common ancestor for all apes and austalopithecines, around 10 MYA, which is when that line split. If australopithecines went on to split later into a further line of australopithecines and humans, then there was no time humans “split from apes.” Also, fossil evidence suggests that humans and australopithecines did co-exist for a while, albeit, australopithecines were gone by the time H. sapiens emerged.
Australopithecines show could be described as a “missing link,” in that they were several species that had both human and ape traits, albeit, they were not a “transitional” species, but flourished for a long time, alongside apes, and before humans emerged; however, before austalopithecines were known, and the term “missing link” was in use, an australopithecine would have answered a lot of questions. In fact, a juvenile skull was discovered in Taung of an A. africanus, but it went unrecognized for just how significant it was, partly because it was a juvenile, and looked more human than an adult of the same species would, but also because it didn’t conform to expectations formed by the Piltdown skull, which people did not realize at the time (IIRC, 1924) was a fake.
As an earlier poster said, though, “missing link” is an outdated notion.
We didn’t split from apes for the simple reason that we are still apes. If you mean something else by “ape” than “large tailless primate”, then you need to define that before you can even ask the question of when we split from them.
We usually date Homo from where we see stone tools made, and where we see an expansion of the brain beyond the “chimp” leve (~ 400 cc)l. Currently, that rests at about 2.1M years ago, and does not extend to Australopiths. But… assignment of genus level is largely arbitrary so it’s going to depend on whether you’re a lumper or a splitter as to whether you are sympathetic with expanding Homo further that it is now.
As for the Taung child, there was no doubt it was not a modern human by all who saw it who were trained in any way in the field. In fact, one early observed thought it was a monkey skull.
I must have accidentally deleted something from that post, like a whole paragraph. It had to do with people thinking the Taung skull was an ancient example of a more or less modern juvenile ape, because juvenile ape skulls look human, as opposed to what they will look like as adults. My point was that because everybody was busy dismissing it as a juvenile, they failed to recognize its importance. But the fact that it came around something like 7 years after the Piltdown skull rocked the world, was the main reason it was dismissed. The scientists at the time, doing the deciding, were invested in human origins in Europe rather than Africa.
Later, Piltdown was debunked, more fossils were found in Africa, and suddenly everyone realized how freaking important Taung was.